Economist (and Braves fan) J.C. Bradbury thinks the best way to deal with the scourge of HGH is to simply allow anyone who wants to use it to do so.
It’s an Insider article so many of you can’t see it, but Bradbury’s upshot is that (a) there is almost a total lack of evidence that HGH actually enhances performance on its own; (b) there is no way to distinguish any benefits it may itself confer upon an athlete from those confered by any steroids with which it is commonly mixed; (c) since blood tests for HGH are unreliable and invasive, and since we can already detect the steroid mixers with urine tests, why bother?; and (d) if you legalize HGH it will send the message to players that it really doesn’t do anything for them, and they will thus be more inclined to steer clear of it and, consequently, its negative side effects.
I’m a big fan of legalization of all manner of things that currently aren’t, and I agree with Bradbury that prohibition may have a glamorizing effect on what would otherwise be a drug that athletes bypass. But I also worry that these are ballplayers we’re talking about, and that they may not respond to prohibition/legalization incentives the way most people do. Ballplayers don’t change their underwear if they go on a hitting streak. They fear stepping on chalk lines. Might they not simply go crazy on HGH if it were legalized the same way Wade Boggs went crazy on pre-game chicken dinners?
Still, Bradbury’s is an idea worth thinking about. If married with a strong, consistent message that (a) HGH is not an effective PED; and (b) it can be bad for you in high dosages, such a plan could work. I just worry that too much time and energy has been invested in making it out to be a wonder drug and cure-all by everyone that truthful messages about its risks and efficacy would fall on deaf ears.
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- Old Gator - Mar 16, 2010 at 9:58 AM
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I agree. Look at how the Supreme Court has solved (or perhaps “rectified”) the problem of political corruption – by legalizing it!
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- Lawrence From Plattekill - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:06 AM
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We don’t know if HGH is an effective PED. There’s no evidence that it is, but as far as I know there’s also no evidence that it isn’t. Rigorous studies in the appropriate populations haven’t been done yet.
I think MLB could afford to sponsor a few studies. Let’s start a publicity campaign.
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- Rays fan - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:11 AM
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Right now, nobody in MLB really has to do anything since there’s no testing for HGH at all. I do not think legalization would lessen its use at all. Ballplayers who use such things aren’t doing it because it’s somehow glamorous. They do it to get that one more hit or one more strike out that might be the difference between being buried in the minors, making very little money, and being in the big leagues where they can count on $400K/yr even as a bench warmer. They do it to get that one more HR that might “earn” an all star turn, or to get back off the diabled list so as not to lose their spot in the rotation. Regardless, they won’t be deterred by a lack of scientific evidence.
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- Jonny5 - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:13 AM
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What about drugs even less harmful that are now not legal? What about international issues with doping laws regarding sports?
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- OldNo7 - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:16 AM
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The only part of Bradbury’s argument with which I disagree is (d). There’s no way that legalization would disincentiveize use with players, because players are terrified that other players might have an edge that they don’t. Look at the MLB rates of use for Lasik and Adderall, which are legal.
HGH is already virtually legal, in that it’s undetectable under current MLB testing. You can only be caught if someone rats you out or your supplier gets pinched. I doubt that a literal legalization would change the number of users very much.
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- Grant - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:18 AM
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J.C. has been saying this for years, and I agree with him. If ballplayers want to kill themselves with a non-performance enhancing poison, let them. Speaking of Wade Boggs, he was known as a drinker. All those Budweisers surely didn’t help his performance, and may damage his body. HGH should be the same.
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- BC - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:29 AM
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Should we legalize pot while we’re at it? C’mon….
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- Craig Calcaterra - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:33 AM
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Um, actually, yeah, I’d be all for the legalization of pot. And I say that having not smoked any for well over a decade, with no plans to do so again any time soon.
Catchpa: “rugby president.”
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- YANKEES1996 - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:41 AM
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This indeed is a slippery slope, making HGH legal will rationalize it’s use by a lot of players. You will not be able to tell the players that it is ineffective as a performance enhancer they will almost certainly experiment with the drug and draw their own conclusions. How do you regulate the drugs use? Do you make the team responsible for the players health when they are using HGH? The players would almost assuredly need to be under the care of a doctor when using HGH, right? What is the possibility that players using HGH go on to use new designer steroids that are hard or impossible to detect without invasive testing?
I tend to agree with Rays fan and OldNo7 making HGH legal is not going to reduce the use by players as long as the players see the drug as a way to bolster their careers and move from the Minors to the Major Leagues. Legalizing this drug is no different than repealing prohibition it will simply move the drug use from the dark corners of the locker rooms and weight rooms into the mainstream of the everyday, and it may get some of the players to consult doctors on the drugs proper use (which would be a good thing), but thinking that the use of the drug is going to completely disappear is extreme optimism.
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- Mark - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:43 AM
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I’m all for these ideas but how can we expect a country that can’t rationally discuss economic issues that are threatening our future have a rational discussion about something as relatively trivial as this?
PS – Having to type in two words at the bottom of a blog about baseball is really annoying. What purpose does it serve?
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- Craig Calcaterra - Mar 16, 2010 at 10:48 AM
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The two words at the bottom of the post ensures that those leaving comments are real people and not spam bots. Since we instituted it last week, spam comments have almost been completely eliminated. This has done away with what is a tremendous annoyance to me in that I read every comment that comes into this blog, and now I don’t have to delete hundreds of spam comments a day. It has also done away with a potential danger to your computer in that the spam comments came with hyperlinked user names, some of which, when clicked, led users to websites full of malware, spyware and other nastiness.
So yes, the two words are a petty annoyance, but they are, regrettably, quite necessary. Suggestion: do what many readers have done and look for unintentionally hilarious word combinations such as the one on this comment. “fur sandwich.”
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- Mark - Mar 16, 2010 at 11:05 AM
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Fair enough, Craig. Thanks for the explanation.
“abstain move”
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- Jonny5 - Mar 16, 2010 at 11:11 AM
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1.3 billion per year is spent fighting marijuana use in the US. This is only Federal tax dollars, not state. Not sure what that is. If they were to flip the script and tax it, well we’d have a more efficient gov’t god forbid. The tax revenue would be huge and the treatment of drug addicts could be improved with the money. Now onto another crime with no victims. Prostitution. Each of Americas biggest cities averaged 12 million per year fighting this IN 1985! God knows what Uncle sam dishes out today. I’m quite sure Freedom includes the right to legalize both mentioned, but tax and regulate it. Imagine our deficit shrinking considerably… I’m a libertarian if anyone hasn’t noticed. I’m told I’m free and live in a free country. I want that. Not that I’d exercise those rights, but I like the option if I’m truly free.
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- mike in MN - Mar 16, 2010 at 11:12 AM
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If it doesn’t hurt you (much), it should probably be legal (I mean, is HGH worse for you, or better for you, than alcohol?). As Bill James wrote a few months ago, this will all be much ado about nothing in a decade or two, when we are all using something like HGH to keep us smarter, younger, healthier, longer. Of course, those that think they know better than me about what is safe (on both sides of the aisle) will make this harder than it needs to be….
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- sjp - Mar 16, 2010 at 11:19 AM
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Lawrence, you have it backwards. It is incumbent to prove something has an effect, not that it has no effect (though typically, the answers are mutually exclusive and this is semantical argument. Just because you are unaware of decades of research, doesn’t mean the work doesn’t exist. There have been many dozens of studies evaluating the effects of HGH on otherwise healthy individuals (i.e., people who are not naturally HGH deficient) and there has been no detectable positive effect (or effects that could translate into performance enhancing) on people with normal HGH levels….you don’t heal faster, you don’t develop more muscle mass, you aren’t faster or stronger….nothing (except poorer for wasting your money buy shady product). HGH has great benefits to people that are naturally deficient, but hasn’t been shown to do anything positive for people that are healthy, which is why it has not been approved for things like healing after operations.
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- Jeff - Mar 16, 2010 at 12:04 PM
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All I know is that Sylvester Stallone has a neck the size of a tree trunk at age 65.
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- Evan - Mar 16, 2010 at 12:17 PM
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And so the ongoing steroid apologist discussion comes to a head.
Legalizing HGH would turn baseball games into a Homerun Derby. Old Hallowed records will be broken, broken again and then become a joke. Games will take twice as long thanks to the HUGE increase in offense.
Small ball, defense and speed will completely disappear.
This is a TERRIBLE idea.
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- Craig Calcaterra - Mar 16, 2010 at 12:23 PM
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Evan, it may be a terrible idea because HGH can be dangerous when taken in high dosages by people who don’t need it, but there is no solid evidence that has yet been adduced to show that it enhances athletic performance on its own (and no one is suggesting that steroids, with which HGH is often mixed, be legalized).
Your view on this seems to have been conditioned by a sporting press that has ignorantly and inaccurately portrayed HGH as some kind of miracle drug that turns mortals into supermen. It’s simply not so, however.
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- OldNo7 - Mar 16, 2010 at 12:38 PM
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One of Craig’s ongoing mantras is to state as fact only what we know as fact, and to refrain from making sweeping generalizations that only distract from legitimate arguments.
Evan, you state that legalizing HGH WOULD do all these harmful things. You don’t know this to be a fact. Craig’s point is that there’s no science that proves HGH in and of itself enhances performance. In almost every case where an athlete was shown to be using HGH, he was also using anabolic steroids.
Arguing that legalization would encourage the use of a potentially dangerous and mysterious substance, as others have done here, is a valid debate. Making absolute statements about speculation and mystery is not.
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- adam7271 - Mar 16, 2010 at 12:51 PM
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How about this; legalize it with the caveat that all usage is public knowledge. Create an HGH-register or something like that. Maybe players will be a little less likely to use it if they knew that everyone would be aware of their definitive use.
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- Evan - Mar 16, 2010 at 1:15 PM
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Craig and OldNo7,
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No solid evidence? I point to exhibit A) Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Miguel Tejada, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmerio.
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I point to exhibit B) Their stats, records and accolades compared to their peers.
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Finally, I point to exhibit C) All or most of them used HGH.
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The sporting press can say what they want. The numbers don’t lie. If you don’t think that HGH provides a benefit to major league players, you’re living on another planet.
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OldNo7. Who died and made you the Argument Police? So long as we’re “speculating” about the concept of legalizing steroids, its VERY appropriate that I speculate about the potential effects of said legalization. My argument is completely legitimate. If baseball EVER explored the idea of legalizing HGH for use by its ballplayers, I’m 100% certain they would discuss the potential effect on the game starting as I have done.
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- Craig Calcaterra - Mar 16, 2010 at 1:21 PM
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Evan, all of those players were also linked to steroids as well. In some cases — David Ortiz, A-Rod — only steroids and not HGH. None of them have been linked to HGH alone, and the current medical understanding is that HGH alone — without steroids — is ineffective as an athletic performance enhancer.
And that’s the subject we’re talking about: HGH in isolation. If you want to deny that and continue on your current course, great, but know that you’re making things up to match your personal beliefs, not dealing in the world of evidence.
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- Charles Gates - Mar 16, 2010 at 1:27 PM
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Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Miguel Tejada, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmerio.
All of those players also presumably ate food during their playing years. Food and nutrition made them stronger. We should ban food!!! Save the records!!1!
The point is unless you know, using actual evidence, that HGH, on its own, increases performance, it is quite reasonable to consider legalizing it.
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- Joey B - Mar 16, 2010 at 1:48 PM
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ROTFLMAO!
This has t be the most naive group I’ve ever seen. You know what, I’ll tell the kids that drinking and drugs is unhealthy and not a good way to have fun, but that they can do as much as they can. That’ll bring it to an end. Then I’ll tell them that when they cheat on a test, they’re only cheating themselves, and then put the class on the honor system. That’ll take care of the cheating.
If they legalize HGH, every single player in BB and in the minors will be lining up. It must be April 1, right?
Given the choice between-
A-Believing Craig that HGH won’t help,
or,
B-Looking at Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, etc and thinking that them shattering records every day might be related to HGH,
there will not be one single person out of the 750 in MLB right now that will not be using HGH.
I’m not saying that 749 players will use it. I’m saying all 750 will use it. You guys have an agenda. These guys live in the real world where their paycheck relies on their stats.
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- Joey B - Mar 16, 2010 at 1:51 PM
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“The point is unless you know, using actual evidence, that HGH, on its own, increases performance, it is quite reasonable to consider legalizing it.”
There is that pesky federal law prohibiting its use. BB can’t legalize it without the feds legalizing it.
